Hunter Valley bakery Bread Basket recently celebrated three decades of business. It’s an achievement owners Stewart and Sharon Latter said they’re incredibly proud of, although it hasn’t come without its challenges.

Stewart, who is a fourth generation baker, said he had always thought he’d be in the business for the long haul.

“It hasn’t been an easy task at times, with staffing shortages, COVID, and the economy in general,” he said.

“But I suppose on reflection Sharon and I are very proud to have run a business over that length of time as there are very few businesses that I know of in any sector where they are still trading after that amount of time in the same premises.”

The Kurri Kurri-based Bread Basket first opened its doors in December 1994, with the purpose-built two-storey shop also boasting a bakery-café out the front.

It’s the last of five Bread Basket bakeries that Stewart owned and operated with a former colleague.

“We had five shops at one stage – four of them at Lake Macquarie and one at Kurri. We sold them off and bought the partners out,” he said.

“I’m the last generation in the business. Besides owning the bakery the four generations have always owned a farm, because back in the old days they owned the farm to cut wood for the wood-fired oven. And, because they always had property they also always had cattle, because what else are they going to do with a paddock full of wood?

“Both my kids are in their 30s. One is managing a station in the Territory, and the other works part-time in charge of the dairy herd at the ag college that’s in the Hunter Valley. And I still have the beef farm.”

An award-winning baker with the 1990 and 1992 Baker of the Year awards under his belt, Stewart’s also currently a National Judge for the Baking Association of Australia (BAA) and the BAA NSW chairperson.

His love for what he does is evident, and so it’s fitting that Stewart said he has long believed that if you’re going to be any good at baking, then you have to love it. This is a motto that also goes for his 36 staff at Bread Basket.

“That’s my theory with the people I employ too. I’ve said, ‘if you don’t want to be here, don’t be here, because you’re not going to do us justice and you’re not going to do yourself justice,” Stewart said.

“I get disheartened when I hear business owners not putting on apprentices and sending them to TAFE to be trained as well as training in the workplace.

“Some people say, ‘why bother training them? They will only leave’. My thought is what if you don’t train them and they stay! It has been a passion to impart my knowledge to others. I was blessed as a bread show competitor in the 1980s and ‘90s that I had this amazing gentleman that judged, called Arthur Denison, who explained and taught me more about bread than anyone else.”